Weekend Journal

It was a three day weekend with a whole extra day with Steve and the kids. As usual, we packed in too much. Is it possible to have adult onset ADD?

Friday night, I had the extended family over for grilled chicken and hotdogs. Bean salad, salad salad, corn bread, mozzarella and tomatoes, and corn. The guys slipped out of work early, so by dinner time there were 14 of us gathered around our dining room table. The kids ran around the house engaged in a fierce water gun battle.

Not fully recovered from the Friday feast, we woke up at 6:30 to set up for our last minute garage sale. We posted signs at the corner and emptied out the basement. Ian rode his bike up and down the driveway past the rows of old toys and furniture. “It’s Christmas time,” he declared. It was more like a reverse Christmas time, but we didn’t tell him that. He figured it out finally when some guy loaded his old rocking horse into the truck of his car. Yes, there were tears.

Oh, the characters who came to shop that morning. A lovely black lady, an aide in a nursing home, took a bag load of dish clothes and aprons — gifts that missed their mark. A paunchy guy in a dirty undershirt dug through the stacks of Steve’s old history books. He told me that he had to go the bank and then go to New York City. I didn’t have to give him a bag for his books, but he came with his own. Later, I asked Steve if was at all concerned that he had the same taste in books as my new friend with Aspergers’ Syndrome. Before leaving, the man gave me a VHS tape of the old Battlestar Galactica TV show. He thought Steve would like it. He kinda did.

People kept coming and anybody who seemed nice or interesting got our stuff for a quarter or two. One lady took Steve’s old skis for the $3. Her husband was an ice fisherman and he would nail the skis to a crate to better haul his stuff on the ice. It was a fun people watching day.

We sold about half our stuff. The rest will end up by the trash can or dropped off at Good Will.

On Sunday, I ditched the family and met up with my friend Margie at the Met. We were curious about the new Greek and Roman rooms. Jonah and Steve are mad about ancient history and statues are a fine way to get kids used to art museums. They like three dimensional art better than paintings. The expansion was good, but with all the hype, I had expected more. And much of the new stuff were small coins, jewelry, glass fragments of pitchers. The kids don’t dig that stuff.

We wandered around talking with the vague goal of ending up on the roof garden for drinks. We stumbled upon the Barcelona exhibit. I insisted on calling it the Bar-th-lona exhibit just to be very pompous and effete. It was a great exhibit whatever you call it. It featured some Picassos that I had never seen before, including some great sketches that he did when he was 19. The only art I made when I was 19 happened in the bathroom after drinking too many shots of tequila. Misspent youth.

I came across some wonderful paintings by Ramon Casas. I hadn’t heard of him before, but he’s a new favorite.

I particularly liked the picture of the couple have a leisurely coffee on the patio in their home. The guy is slouched in his chair, and the couple is quietly enjoying the cool morning air. I turned to Margie and said, “Steve would like to do more of that.” Margie said, “it looks like Steve, too.” We smiled and kept walking.

After the museum, we needed food and drink. Instead of getting a full meal, we had appetizers and wine in two different restaurants. There’s that ADD problem again. At Orsay, there was cheese, tuna tartar, french fries, and half a bottle of Pinot Noir. At a Brazilian place down the block, more wine with flan and coffee for dessert. It was probably a good thing that I took the bus rather than the car into the city.

Monday was kid day. Jonah marched in the town parade. Afterwards, we played with the trains for several hours and then to the mall for a viewing of Shrek the Third.

It was really a spectacular weekend. The kids were in top form, and major projects were finished off. Though there wasn’t enough quiet coffee drinking on the porch. Maybe next weekend. Now, it’s back to work.